1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a system and method for managing service levels of a contact center and particularly to a system and method for assisting agents of the contact center during calls.
2. Description of Related Art
Contact centers are employed by many enterprises to service inbound and outbound contacts from customers. A typical contact center includes a switch and/or server to receive and route incoming packet-switched and/or circuit-switched contacts and one or more resources, such as human agents and automated resources (e.g., Interactive Voice Response (IVR) units), to service the incoming contacts. Contact centers distribute contacts, whether inbound or outbound, for servicing to any suitable resource according to predefined criteria. In many existing systems, the criteria for servicing the contact from the moment that the contact center becomes aware of the contact until the contact is connected to an agent are client or operator-specifiable (i.e., programmable by the operator of the contact center), via a capability called vectoring. Normally, in present-day ACDs when the ACD system's agent assisting system detects an agent has become available to handle a contact, the agent assisting system identifies all predefined contact-handling queues for the agent (usually in some order of priority) and delivers to the agent the highest-priority, oldest contact that matches the agent's highest-priority queue. Generally, the only condition that results in a contact not being delivered to an available agent is where there are no contacts waiting to be handled.
The primary objective of contact center management is to ultimately maximize contact center performance and profitability. An ongoing challenge in contact center administration is monitoring and optimizing contact center efficiency. Contact center efficiency is generally measured in two ways.
Service level is one measurement of contact center efficiency. Service level is typically determined by dividing the number of contacts accepted within the specified period by the number accepted plus the number not accepted, but completed in some other way (e.g., abandoned, given busy, canceled, flowed out). Of course, service level definitions may vary from one enterprise to another.
Match rate is another indicator used in measuring contact center efficiency. Match rate is usually determined by dividing the number of contacts accepted by a primary skill level agent within a period of time by the number of contacts accepted by any agent for a queue over the same period. An agent with a primary skill level is one that typically can handle contacts of a certain nature most effectively and/or efficiently. There are other contact center agents that may not be as proficient as the primary skill level agent, and those agents are identified either as secondary skill level agents or backup skill level agents. As can be appreciated, contacts received by a primary skill level agent are typically handled more quickly and accurately or effectively (e.g., higher revenue attained) than a contact received by a secondary or even backup skill level agent. Thus, it is an objective of most contact centers to optimize match rate along with service level.
In addition to service level and match rate performance measures, contact centers use other Key Performance Indicators (“KPIs”), such as revenue, estimated, actual, or predicted wait time, average speed of answer, throughput, agent utilization, agent performance, agent responsiveness and the like, to calculate performance relative to their Service Level Agreements (“SLAs”). Operational efficiency is achieved when KPIs are managed near, but not above, SLA levels.
Throughput is a measure of the number of calls/contact requests or work requests that can be processed in a given amount of time. Agent utilization is a measure of how efficiently agents' time is being used. Customer service level is a measure of the time customers spend waiting for their work to be handled. Company contact center customers wish to provide service to as many requests as possible in a given amount of time, using the least number of agents to do so, and minimizing the wait time for their customers.
Typically, when a new work request arrives into a contact center, a most suitable agent to work on it is selected by the contact center to handle the work request. However, all agents are not at same level in the contact center. Some of the agents are very skilled (also called as gold rated agents), but some of the agents are not very skilled, but having some minimum skills (also called silver rated agents). Hence, it is possible all gold rated agents are busy at some time. The contact center may forward calls at those times to silver rated agents. However, as discussed above, silver rated agents have only basic skill level, and there is no guarantee those calls will be handled at the same quality provided by gold rated agents. Hence, customers at those calls will remain unsatisfied by the handling of their calls, and this may affect business of contact center.
Further, contact centers keep hiring new agents depending upon the contact centers' requirement. Training of new agents is typically done at back-end, without exposing them to real time environment, as there are chances of mishandling of calls. After some initial training, new agents require exposure of real time training for improving their skills level. However, the contact centers do not want to lose business because of it. Hence, in a conventional contact center, coaching of the agents is done with assistance of a supervisor, who generally sits alongside an agent, and provides prompts and assistance on an ongoing basis during a training shift in real time environment. The supervisor may also sit elsewhere like his/her desk and use features such as observe/whisper to listen in to ongoing calls and provide necessary help to the agents through telephone calls, emails, or over an intranet. However, these traditional processes are manual, stress full and time consuming for a supervisor. Further, there also chances of mishandling of calls, as the supervisor can't help all agents in his/her team at same time.
There is thus a need for a contact center that can assist agents during calls and provide necessary training to the agents to handle calls in a real time environment.